Nobel Prize Winners (1998)

By way of a metaphor that's as subtle as a train wreck--the Iberian
Peninsula shears off from the European land mass and starts floating out
to sea--the Portuguese Nobelist Jose Saramago assays the isolation of Portugal
and Spain from the rest of Europe and, for that matter, from the rest of
the world. The new island drifts first towards America then South;
at one point it rotates; but for the most part it just seems to be adrift.
Of course, the oddest thing about all this is that the book was published
just as Spain and Portugal were formally joining the European Community
and officially ending their years in the wilderness.

If Mr. Saramago has a coherent point here it was too nuanced for one
as literal as I. And since I didn't much care for the group of characters
that he follows, I did not care for the book. It seemed like a mildly
clever idea for a short story that went nowhere and did so at too great
length.